The editorial board of the «Journal of Advanced Materials and Technologies» understands conflicts of interest as any relationship or area of interest that could directly or indirectly affect the results of your work, reviews or make them biased. Conflicts of interest tend to accompany many studies, and the fact that they exist is not unethical and does not constitute a sufficient reason to reject your work. The policy of our journal is based on the independence and reliability of the data provided, therefore it is important and obligatory for us to receive all information about possible conflicts of interest so that we can make an objective decision on the publication of your work or review of your expert opinion. It is important for us to provide an opportunity for our readers to form their own opinion about the article, having all the data for this.
Conflicts of interest can arise at all stages and between all participants of the research and editorial and publishing cycle:
- financial relationship with the organization that sponsors the research or is the manufacturer of the product that becomes the subject of the research;
- labor relations, when the author is an employee or a member of an organization that is interested in obtaining certain results of the conducted research;
- personal relationships that can affect the formation of objective research results.
For example, the distribution of conflicts of interest might look like this:
- authors: specified financial, labor, personal and other relationships;
- co-authors: in addition to the above - uncoordinated personal relationships within the group of authors;
- peer reviewers: in addition to the above - a competing relationship with the author of the research, which may cause negative feedback on the peer-reviewed manuscript; family, friendship and other relationships that can cause an unreasonable positive feedback;
- editors and publishers: in addition to the above, sponsorship and other mutually beneficial relationships with authors or affiliated organizations that may influence an objective decision to publish the manuscript.
Please note that the presence of a possible conflict of interest does not mean your unfair behavior when performing research or reviewing it. In order to create conditions for an objective assessment of your work and adhere to the ethical principles of scientific publications, the following rules should be followed.
For authors:
- it is necessary to reveal all potential conflicts of interest in the appropriate form (link);
- it is necessary to confirm the absence of a conflict of interest within the group of authors in the appropriate form (link);
- it is necessary to indicate all sources of research funding in the appropriate section of the manuscript ("Funding");
- when submitting a manuscript, indicate colleagues with whom the author has a conflict of interest, in order to exclude them from the list of potential reviewers.
For reviewers:
- refuse to review a manuscript in the cases stipulated by the Review Regulations (link). The ban on peer review applies to:
- employees of the organization that the author is affiliated with;
- students and scientific advisers of the author;
- co-authors of other works of the author;
- participants of a joint (with the author) research project (s);
- other persons who are in competitive, scientific, financial or any other relationship with the authors of the article.
For editors and members of the editorial board:
- if there is a potential conflict of interest, notify the editor-in-chief (deputy editor-in-chief) and the editorial board about that in order to ensure an unbiased decision on the publication of the manuscript;
- when considering a manuscript of a member of the editorial board, exclude any form of his participation in the examination and evaluation of his own manuscript.
For publishers:
- to ensure the right of editorial independence and not to affect the decision to publish the manuscript.
Information for this section was prepared based on materials from Springer, Pleiades, as well as methodological materials of the Association of Science Editors and Publishers (ASEP).